


like you have before

by mildlydiscouraging



Category: The Bright Sessions (Podcast)
Genre: Boys Kissing, Episode Related, Feelings, M/M, Making Out, Missing Scene, Season/Series 03, The Safe House Part I to be specific
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-24
Updated: 2017-11-24
Packaged: 2019-02-06 01:47:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12806940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mildlydiscouraging/pseuds/mildlydiscouraging
Summary: Other things that distract from bone-crushing fear.





	like you have before

Sometimes Caleb thinks or says something and has to stop to wonder how his life got to the point where whatever it is is a completely normal thing to think or say.

For example, here he is thinking about how it's a good thing that Sam is such a worrier and so had the foresight to buy frames for her safe house safe beds so Adam could flop back dramatically onto the mattress without breaking his spine or anything, as he does now.

"Alright, Mr. Theatrics," Caleb says from over him, standing like a normal human being. Adam doesn't say anything, simply waving one ineloquent arm in his direction. "What's all this for?"

Adam sighs and lets his arm fall over his face as he says, "Distraction."

Caleb rolls his eyes where he thinks Adam can't see and gets a kick in the shins for his trouble—not too hard, of course, but boot makes contact with denim nonetheless—before sitting down next to him on the bed.

"Tell me more about your power," Adam adds as the mattress under them dips a little. It's a very squishy bed; Sam really went all out, as per usual.

Caleb is sure his expression is suspicious but can't help the laughter in his voice when he asks, "Why?"

"Distraction," Adam repeats as he rolls his head to face Caleb. "Tell me about how feelings feel."

For a moment, neither of them say anything. Underneath everything Caleb can feel the distant twinge of anxiety coming from both of them, and from downstairs more stress and concern and everything else, but none of that is what's distracting. That would be Adam.

It's stupid, but... He's beautiful. Adam, with his warm gaze and his sleeves just a little too long and his perpetual dark circles under his eyes and his hair spread out around his head and his hands folded awkwardly over his stomach. The sheets underneath him are an unassuming cream and Adam's dark purple hoodie (dark purple, not black, and not even that dark, because he's been wearing more colors recently, don't read into it, Caleb, but maybe it has to do with him, or them, he doesn't know) just looks really...

Soft. Soft and hazy and gentle.

There's half a dozen things Caleb considers saying, about how even though they're both freaking out there's something warm about it like standing on cold tile floor in socks instead of bare feet, about how Adam is all glowy around the edges with the light of the window behind him, or how every time Caleb looks at him it's like the first time.

"A lot more things are emotions than you'd think," is what he ends up saying, and he rolls with it, sitting up straighter and starting to unconsciously gesticulate.

"There's happy and sad and all those, but also frustrated and motivated. And a lot of them are really similar too, like, guilt is close to worry and shame? But they're all just a little different."

Adam is still looking at him curiously so Caleb continues, "So guilt is all liquid-y like paint and worry is kinda itchy and shame is more inward and dull like a chalkboard. It was a  _long_  time before I figured out how to tell them all apart, and even now it's still hard sometimes to be able to read what someone else is feeling or tell that it's not my feeling, especially with you."

When Adam sits up fully his hair is flattened in the back, and Caleb refuses to tell him. It's kind of adorable.

"You always say that," Adam is saying when Caleb finally tears himself away from thoughts of running his hands through that hair. "That it's hard to tell our emotions apart. I never ask. Why?"

For just a second Caleb gives in and tugs on an errant curl. When Adam rolls his eyes and bats him away Caleb claims it as a success and moves on.

"It's like..." He says, trailing off when he isn't quite sure his standard metaphor is still enough.

He tries again. "Everyone feels the same emotion a little differently, you know?" Adam nods with his kind of expectant but easy understanding and Caleb can't help his reflexive smile. "So one person's sad isn't the same as another's. With most people that makes it easier to differentiate, and I mean obviously we don't feel all the exact same things, but with you it's completely different. The way that you feel things and the way that I feel things just... mesh, you know?"

Adam's bright curiosity glints in his eyes and in his feelings too, like a sweet little shove into his figurative space. It's bolstering and infectious like it always is and Caleb builds momentum.

"I've always explained it as like paint mixing, but that's not really a hundred percent right, you know? Because even then it doesn't completely mix, there's still bits of each individual color, and that's how it is with most people—there's my emotions, and their emotions, and they overlap a little but there's still some difference. But with you..."

For a moment the constant fondness coming from Adam spikes, louder than the background noise level it's usually at and warmer, brighter. Caleb is too distracted to do anything more than watch Adam smile at him and they get caught in a loop of Adam feeling warm and Caleb feeling warm back, and Adam smiling and Caleb smiling back, and Adam putting his hand on Caleb's and squeezing slightly and Caleb squeezing back.

When Adam gestures with his other hand for him to continue, Caleb rolls his eyes and says, "You remember those little clear plastic circle things from when you were a kid? That came in all the different colors?"

"Bingo chips," Adam supplies.

"Oh shit, is that what they were?" When Adam nods again, laughter in his eyes, Caleb continues, "Okay, yeah, those, and when you put two on top of each other they line up perfectly and it's not even two colors anymore, it's just the one."

Something like understanding but warmer dawns from Adam and he nods slowly before simply saying, "Green."

"Yeah." Caleb feels his face heating up. "I don't know, it's just... We're on the same wavelength. Always. It's like your feelings and my feelings are meant to go together."

As Adam stares at him with this look in his eyes that Caleb's not narcissistic enough to call "wondrous" but maybe it still is that feeling grows, just familiar enough that Caleb almost sees it coming when Adam kisses him.

It's abrupt and heated and very short because Adam is immediately pulling away so he can turn to face Caleb fully and kiss him again, properly this time. It feels simultaneously like every second is an hour and every minute ceases to exist, it's so short. Suddenly Caleb has two fistfuls of hoodie, one near Adam's waist and one that may include an awkward bit of drawstring and hood, in the figurative blink of an eye, and yet when he feels the lightest brush of Adam's eyelashes against his cheek time stops.

After a little while they both break briefly for air and Adam asks in an increasingly ragged voice, "Wait. I don't want you to think that this is just about—"

"Yeah, I know." Caleb smiles, goofy, and pulls him in again.

"Because you're really important to me," Adam tries to add. It works well enough to get the point across even as he's kissing Caleb again, all over, anywhere he can reach. His skin is really warm under Caleb's hands under his shirt, and Caleb himself is really warm, both literally and figuratively. Everything is really warm. It's  _so_  nice.

"Yeah, I know," Caleb says with an even wider smile. Adam's mouth is somewhere near his cheek with very deliberate kisses that are undermined by how hectic they are. "You're really important to me too, like, so important, and significant, and..."

Caleb can tell he's babbling but can't make himself stop.

"Consequential," Adam suggests as he's trying to shove Caleb's jacket off his shoulders. He gets stuck at the cuffs and Caleb's arms are trapped behind his back, leading to a little bit of shuffling and leaning and teamwork to free him again, but when he is Adam is immediately on him again.

"Yes!" Wrists unbound, Caleb stops to hold Adam's face. "You're  _so_  smart, what the fuck, I  _love_  you."

Half-drunk on communal feeling, both of them breathless, it isn't until he finishes saying it that Caleb realizes how stupid he must sound. When he does, he starts thinking about the hundred other ways he would have rather put it than something so simplistic.

Adam doesn't seem to mind, though, too busy knocking their foreheads together as he looks down shyly like he didn't just have his tongue down Caleb's throat. Caleb's hands are still on his face, though, so when Caleb nudges him slightly he looks up with absolutely no resistance.

"Yeah?" Adam asks, and Caleb takes a moment to really consider his answer.

Adam is sitting in front of him, his hair is sticking up eight hundred different ways, the neck of his hoodie is all askew, and there's just a smudge of saliva past his mouth that's kind of really gross, and yeah. Caleb loves him.

"Yeah. Of course."

This time when they kiss it is far more unhurried but no less adamant. This time their lips meet and Adam's feelings are like a wave coming in and filling the tidal pool full of his own, mixing together with ease. This time it feels like everything is in slow motion.

Caleb breathes in slowly and feels every atom of oxygen in it. In one moment Adam leans back, Caleb leans forward, Caleb pauses to comment teasingly on how small Adam is, Adam tells him to shut up, and time continues like dripping honey. Suddenly they're lying down and Caleb finds his lungs full of the heavy kind of  _pleased_  that Caleb knows now is how Adam feels when Caleb is covering him "like a really heavy and dumb blanket, asshole" and there's space between them but not that much. Adam's hair is so soft and his hands are so soft and his skin, and as much as he puts up a front Adam himself is soft, and Caleb is completely under his spell, so much so that everything outside of Adam and Caleb and  _AdamandCaleb_  ceases to exist.

"Oh. Um."

If Caleb were more dramatic, he would probably say a part of him died in that moment. As it is, he definitely tentatively thinks it to himself because he did  _not_  just hear his therapist's voice from the doorway while he was in the middle of making out with his boyfriend with both of them in dissembling states of undress.

"I'll just—"

No, that's definitely Dr. Bright (Or does he call her Joan now? At this point he knows more about her than probably anyone should ever know about their therapist) and for a moment Caleb just wishes his power was invisibility instead so he could disappear off the face of the Earth. Instead he just hides his face in Adam's shoulder, the one closest to the door because he's not a monster and won't subject his boyfriend to awkward eye contact with his therapist.

The door clicks and Caleb sighs a little in relief before reemerging. There's a brief moment of awkward solace where they just stare at each other glad to have dodged a bullet for now, before the horrifying click of the door sounds again.

This time none of them can pretend to not know what's going on and Caleb can only imagine how objectively ridiculous they all must look. A boy and his boyfriend and his therapist in a very embarrassing tableau.

"I just wanted to say..." Dr. Bright clears her throat awkwardly, still not daring to open the door any further than is necessary to reveal her face. "I just wanted to say that while I am not entirely certain this is the best circumstance, and I'm not sure how Sam would feel about... anything further happening under her roof, I am very happy that you two have each other. And also that Sam was wondering if either of you were hungry."

"Uh, sure, I guess," Caleb says. He's suddenly very aware that he's still basically lying on top of Adam. He's propped on his elbows and knees but still, basically lying on top of his boyfriend, very obviously doing whatever they were doing or about to do, giving his therapist his dinner order.

After a beat she nods and closes the door with a weird half-grimace that's mostly a smile. Blissful awkward silence returns.

When she's gone again Adam breaks out into nervous giggles, tinged with hysteria. Even with the general flood of embarrassment that completely addictive  _just got away with something_  fills the room. Caleb doesn't even try to tell which of them is feeling it.

**Author's Note:**

> it's my last SECONDS of being a teenager, i just realized these two are legitimately high school sweethearts and SOULMATES, and this definitely happened lauren shippen you can pry this from my cold dead hands goodNIGHT
> 
> (i was gonna call em winks instead of bingo chips cuz i was always an ink blotter kind of guy but then i realized no one under forty remembers tiddlywinks and maybe i really am not a teenager anymore huh)
> 
> title from "[coalesce (synesthesia pt. ii)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZlPw5WP94o)" by jack garratt
> 
> tumblr @[moonfullofstars](http://moonfullofstars.tumblr.com)  
> ko-fi @[mildlydiscouraging](https://ko-fi.com/mildlydiscouraging)


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